


sustenance

by pseudocitrus



Category: Tokyo Ghoul, Tokyo Ghoul:re
Genre: F/M, demon/nun au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 07:14:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13497284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: After Anteiku is destroyed, Touka decides to join a new abbey, and meets a priest who tempts her away from her devotions.





	sustenance

**Author's Note:**

> a (super late) present for my dear & wonderful @neimana, based on her very compelling akuma!neki x nun!touka headcanons which are [here](https://twitter.com/_neimana/status/855307302852636672). i initially planned to try and have it match those HCs as much as possible but, it, veered,, a bit;;;
> 
> hope you're having a good day!

It’s a long time in coming, and yet a surprise. Ayato meets her announcement with silence, and on the morning of her departure, she waits, and waits, and in the end receives nothing from him, not even a farewell.

_We all make our own decisions._  That’s what Yoshimura said to her, once.

And this is hers.

Touka stands. She casts one last look around the place she once shared with her brother, and understands there’s nothing to tie her to it now, not even him. Hopefully Aogiri will care for him.

As the carriage pulls away, she casts one last glance to the dark rubble on the horizon, to the shadow that is all that remains of Yoshimura and his monastery. For so long it been a place of safety, where even a filthy brat like her could be given a warm mug and a place by the fire, and then, eventually, years later, a job. It was the one place she knew that was never beset upon by demons, the one place where everyone who gathered met in peace, as long as they followed Yoshimura’s rules. It should have been obvious to her that that kind of blessing didn’t last forever.

Already her memories are fading: the rich, bitter coffee; the assortment of patrons, all kinds, boisterous and solemn, vicious and kind. Time is already wresting everything away. She tries to watch for as long as possible, for as long as her view remains unbroken — but just as she tries to tuck the ruins into her memory, the shadow begins to warp. Its outline churns. Touka turns cold as she realizes that Anteiku is covered in vultures and ravens, their feathers and wings seething as they feast. Even from this distance she feels she can hear the click of their beaks, like blades sharpening, and the wet sound of them stabbing again and again into fetid flesh.

She turns away, hands folding and gripping each other.

She has a new home now.

:::

It’s supposed to be a completely new start. She cast away her things, everything, except for the necklace; and, she prepared to be unprepared. But Touka knows exactly what smile to make, and what words to say, and it’s troublesome at first to figure out how to wear the habit but even this she figures out, with grace. She learns names. She learns the general feel and layout of her new ward, which is neither the best ward in the province, nor the worst.

The ward residents are afflicted with some darkness, but not too much. Inquisitors pass through just long enough to to scare out the demons, but never stay long enough to disrupt or dominate the way of things. Things here feel as if they had gone without interruption in hundreds of years.

Touka kneels. As she closes her eyes, she remembers Ayato, again. The sharp shock of betrayal in his gaze. How difficult it had been to force the words through her mouth, and how she might never have said them if she had known they would become a wall between them.

_”I’m tired of walking this tightrope. I’m tired of being caught between…two worlds. I’m making a choice. I’m choosing a side.”_

Ayato said nothing. Presently, the chapel is silent too.

And cold, as usual, despite the fact that she is crowded on either side by devotees. Together, they kneel shoulder-to-shoulder, heads bowed in wordless supplication. The light falls across her brow, shaded only slightly by her habit. Long sleeves and long collar and still the cold sinks into her bones. The faint light provides only a little warmth.

_It’s enough,_  she tells herself. She shuts her eyes even more tightly. As the others stand one by one and file away, Touka remains, forehead pressed to her pale knuckles. Probably, everyone else had prayers more befitting to offer, ones that are kinder, more loving. She’s capable of those too, out in the world. She smiles and offers cups of coffee to cold hands, always with the standard kind words: “ _Follow me; I will grant you sustenance._ ” But when she’s by herself, this is the only thing she requests. The only thing she really wants to believe.

_It’s enough._

:::

_It’s enough._

:::

_It’s enough._

:::

It’s enough.

Touka stands. She’s always the last one left here, the most devoted one, the one most purely dedicated, and perhaps, after so many months, it’s true, because she is so engrossed she doesn’t notice she’s not alone until she looks up and realizes there’s a shadow on the alter that shouldn’t be there. She blinks, and as she watches, it grows even wider, giant. It broadens, and then stretches at its edges, like big fingers, like —

_Wings._

Wings larger than the wingspan of the largest carrion eater. She screams and whirls around — but rather than some massive raven or some kind of terrible demon, all she sees is a single figure, alone. A human-shaped shadow illuminated by a plane of light cast by the open chapel doors.

“Oh…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” The person is dressed in priest’s robes. They adjust their glasses with gloved hands. “Are you alright?”

Her heart is racing. Her hand is clasped tight to her chest, impulsive, to her necklace that rests beneath her habit. What — what —

_A hallucination,_  she tells herself. A bit of bad luck. Just a brief nightmare, flashing its pinions when she’s most off-guard.

“I’m…fine.” She composes herself. She approaches. “Do you need help?”

“Ah…”

As she comes nearer, she sees that his hair, his eyes, are dark. His clothing tells her he’s a priest, but when she stands before him, he doesn’t look over her or into his book as priests do — instead, he looks at her, fully. He meets her gaze with a directness she hasn’t encountered since she arrived here and she pauses, surprised. There’s something…familiar about it.

She forgot that people could look at you that way. A wave of — of something, travels over her arms, her spine. She shivers.

“Help,” he repeats. “Yes, I think you could help me.”

He smiles, warmly.

:::

Ken Kaneki is a new priest assigned to their abbey, supposedly newly graduated, though when Touka shows him around he asks questions about the meaning and purpose of everything, like any common novitiate. Her head aches from it and she’s glad to lead him to his room, but when she shows him the shelf where he can put his book, he blinks at it.

“Oh, good,” he says. “That’s convenient. It looks like a lot could fit in there.”

“‘A lot?’ What are you talking about?”

He stares at her. She stares back.

“It’s for your book,” Touka tells him, eyes narrowed. “Your holy book.”

He smiles. “Ah…right. Of course.”

She stares at him. He stares back.

“You have one,” Touka says. “Don’t you?”

“Priests are supposed to have one,” Touka continues. She only explains this to fill up a pause that was stretching too far for comfort. Kaneki looks thoughtful.

“Ah!” he says, as if suddenly remembering, as if the holy book was a thing that a priest could ever possibly forget. “Right, right. My book.”

He reaches into his robes, and withdraws a book so old that its cover is worn and its binding is unreadable. It’s far smaller than other books that Touka has seen priests carry reverently in plain sight everywhere they go, but Kaneki holds it in both hands, like a relic, and then gently places it on the bookshelf. Not with its cover proudly outward, but just standing on its side, like he is shelving a normal book.

“Good?” Kaneki asks.

As she watches, the book slides, and lands flat on the shelf with a quiet thud.

“Perfect,” Touka says, tiredly.

The sun is setting now. She would normally be done with all her tasks by now, but now she still has everything left to do  _and_  feels particularly exhausted.

“Alright, then,” Touka says. “I’ll leave you to get settled.”

“Thank you, Touka,” Kaneki says. He turns toward her, and looks at her, again. Almost as an afterthought, he rests his hands behind his back, formal.  And —

When she’s with the other priests and nuns of the abbey, it’s not like this. But for some reason, now, Touka feels the prickle again, along her arms and spine. For the first time in months, she’s aware of the fact that she is alone in a room, with only one other individual. Summer is waning and it’s cold enough in the abbey at this time that her breath is almost pluming before her, but she realizes now that she is somehow near enough to him to feel the warmth coming off his body.

“Farewell,” she says, abruptly, and turns, and leaves. The door starts to swing shut too slowly, and she yanks it, closing it herself.

:::

The abbey is large enough there’s no need to encounter any particular individual frequently unless absolutely necessary. Even when Touka was a fresh novitiate, she trailed after her mentor only as long as necessary, and even now, when they pass each other in the hallway, they share only brief, polite nods. Their duty extends only as far as respect and general kindness; their devotions belong elsewhere.

This is the world she entered. So, to see Kaneki so frequently borders on the surreal.

At first, it’s merely in passing — a dark silhouette in the corner of her vision —  a figure surveying the grounds, organizing books, meeting her gaze as he passes with the other priests to provide daily counsel and small rites to the town town. The priests flocking to and fro had never piqued her attention before. Now, sometimes, even when she’s sweeping the yellowing leaves off the roof, she imagines she can even see the glint of his glasses as he makes his way down.

But, they exchange no words. For a while it’s as if they had never met and Touka wonders if perhaps they really hadn’t, but then he passes one morning in the abbey when she’s preparing coffee, and says “Good morning, Touka,” and smiles at her softly, and Touka is so startled that he manages to pours himself coffee and thanks her for it without her able to stop him and explain that the coffee is only for the townspeople. She looks around, slightly panicked, but no one else notices his indulgence. Before long he finishes the small amount he poured, and when he hands the mug back his gloved hand brushes hers, and her spine reacts. The memory of that static is still strong when she kneels that evening in the chapel, a second emergency visit apart from her daily morning one. Alone, her hands make a trembling steeple in the cold.

_It’s enough. It’s enough._

“It’s enough,” she murmurs, aloud, to give it more power. This is her life. She waits until she’s so numb it’s hard to stand, and then she has to wait again for the blood to return to her legs. Even after that, she waits, just a little longer. For something. Anything. A voice, maybe, to speak to her in the dark.

The chapel is silent. And cold, as usual. This is foolish. No one like her is in a position to make demands, or even to beg, for anything.

“Sorry,” she mutters aloud. “I didn’t…” She sighs. The next thought, she can’t bear to say aloud.

_I don’t know what I’m doing._

At loss, she lights a candle to light her way back to her room. The illumination of it flashes in her vision when she blinks, fading, fading, fading. In the corridor, she hears the rustle of feathers.

_No,_  she thinks.  _Fabric_. It’s Kaneki, further down. Seeing her, he reaches into his robes and withdraws that old book, with the air of someone straightening their clothing.

“Goodnight, Touka.” He smiles, and for a moment it reminds her of a hundred other smiles that were once flashed at her, back before she made her decision, smiles that always meant to invite more than just a responding “ _Goodnight._ ” At the time, she always said nothing. Now shouldn’t be any different.

“Goodnight, Kaneki.”

The phrase bursts out of her when he’s already walking away. It surprises him, but not as much as it surprises her. She stiffens; she almost covers her mouth, and doesn’t only because she’s petrified.

He looks back at her. Then he smiles, a little nervously.

“You know, I…that is…this is troublesome, but…I was wondering if you could help me tomorrow,” he says. “I’ve arranged the books in the library a dozen times now at least, probably…but, um…I can’t seem to get them in order.”

“In order?”

“Well, not the right order,” he admits. “The…proper one. Whichever one is officially sanctioned.”

Touka grimaces at him. “I don’t understand why you’re a priest despite being this incompetent,” she says, before realizing she is saying it. The words just slipped out of her, easily — but not without a slight creak. This old voice of hers has fallen too far out of use. Her own roughness almost makes her cough, and any normal priest might take offense and flare, but Kaneki —  _laughs_.

“Well, of course I’m a priest to…fulfill a higher purpose?” He says it like he’s guessing it. “In any case. What do you think? Will you…ah…follow me?”

He really has no idea what he’s doing.

“You say ‘follow me’ when you’re bestowing a gift to someone,” Touka tells him. “When you’re promising to give them something from your heart. Not when you’re the one asking for help.”

“Ah…of course. Sorry. I mean — apologies.”

“It’s ‘Follow me,’” she continues. “And, ‘I will grant you sustenance.’”

“What a mouthful,” he murmurs.

“Saying it takes little effort, compared to what it takes to do good for someone who needs it. In any case,” Touka says, “of course I’ll help you.”

“You…really?”

“Yes. At least to save you from wasting even more time that you could spend on others instead.”

He blinks at her. Then he smiles, warmly.

“Right. Thank you,” he says. He nods at her, and turns, and leaves.

One thing that surprised her after arriving here was how cold the ward became, so soon. In her room, her breath hovers in the air. Even after the candle is long out, though, she can feel the heat of its extinguished flame, as surely as if wax were just about to drip on her skin.

:::

_I made a choice._

A choice that means she is devoted to the light, to a set of rules, to piety, to restraint. Sorting books with him is well enough, and probably is a necessity — the endeavor takes days, not just because of the volume of books but because Kaneki insists on cracking open each of them to read them a bit, which turns out to be something he is actually capable of.

“You can’t?” Kaneki asks. “Read them, I mean?”

“I can,” she says, defensively. The words come out sharp, again, and her throat feels rough; she clears it. “They’re just…complicated. Anyway, I can read the book that matters.”

“I can help you,” he says, “if you want. If you’re interested in anything other than the holy book.”

She’s never seen anyone’s eyes get so large over a bunch of crusty paper. She blows on the cover of the book he’s holding, sending dust all over his face. He coughs, and takes off his now-gray glasses, blinking hard.

“One thing at a time,” she tells him, unable to hide her amusement.

_And no more talking to you, after this,_  she finds herself unable to tell him.  _I made a choice._

Her time is to be spent serving, not laughing over strange old titles and even stranger read-aloud excerpts that she can’t tell if he’s making up. Serving, not counting the seconds their shoulders touch as she teaches him now to make coffee, not coordinating to clean the same rooms together and finding secluded places afterward where they can comfort their cold hands on the coffee-filled mugs and chat quietly over a view of the town, which she admitted was her favorite place to watch the distant townspeople, and the night sky. Not searching for his silhouette amidst the other priests as if he is any different than them. Not noticing that she has seen him read every book except the holy one, not asking them their titles, not asking him for the definitions of words she’d never seen, much less heard murmured softly into her ear. Her mind at the altar is supposed to be intended for reflection and the sowing of prayer for the weak and hopeless, and not the silent counting of the seconds until she can be free again, seconds that move so much more slowly than the ones she spends in his company.

_I made a choice._  Rules, piety, restraint. From the abbey roof view, the trees surrounding the town turn crimson and gold and then shed to reveal bare thin branches, reaching skyward in supplication, or perhaps only reaching toward the balcony they’re on. The summer has passed now, and turned into a season of sickness; caring for the ill of the town has meant it’s been a while since they’ve seen each other last, and though Touka is glad to see him, his face looks unexpectedly, almost shockingly gaunt. She’s shocked.

“You should rest,” she says, almost furious. She says it more firmly than she’s ever said to a belligerent townsperson working far beyond their means, but Kaneki just waves her off.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Let’s go.”

He read in some old book that the moon would be especially bright tonight, and Touka can’t dissuade him from canceling their plans to glimpse it. She prepares coffee, and they carry it up the spiral stairs. The roof, indeed, is limned in pale gold; the moon is so large that their exhales glow and float, like spirits in the air. The moonlight itself is as rich and heavy as the cream Touka remembers from before the days of sparse abbey larders. It catches on the lenses of Kaneki’s glasses. Illuminated like this, his skin looks even paler. His eyes almost seem to glow.

“Are you sure you’re fine?”

“Yes,” he says, feebly. “I’m fine.”

Touka frowns. She turns back to the moon. Maybe if she indulges him especially in the next few minutes, he’ll agree to retreat and allow her to escort him to his room to rest.

“The way the moon is now reminds me,” she finds herself saying.

“Reminds you? Of what?”

“Of that line…”

The line in the very first book she’d discovered he slipped into the pocket of her habit. The one that had come from the abbey library but had not turned out to be any holy book at all, but rather one whose lines now float to mind easy when she is idle. He’d read the entire first chapter aloud to her the next time she saw him in the library, and at the time Touka felt like one of the cobwebs there when he spoke — a spare shape, swaying, billowing on his every word.

“That line about eggs,” Touka says, “the one about being shattering and being reborn,” and Kaneki smiles.

“What’s so funny?” Touka demands, startled and vaguely, vaguely delighted. That type of smile is a new one. She jabs him a bit, with her elbow. He seems almost…

“You really do like these books, don’t you?” he asks.

“Of course,” Touka says in confusion. “Otherwise I wouldn’t read them, would I?”

“I just didn’t expect you would,” Kaneki says. “I don’t…that’s new. And the coffee. And talking. I didn’t think…I didn’t expect…”

“Expect what?”

But he is looking down at his gloved hands. Touka rests her hand on one of them, to get his attention, but then finds herself holding it there. 

“Kaneki.” She repeats it when he looks at her, until the thoughtfulness he regards her with is not, she realizes, thoughtfulness at all, but something else. An emotion she now recognize as a sort of sorrow.

“Touka.” His voice, suddenly, is bare. “You’re beautiful.”

There is nothing about her to find beautiful. Almost no part of her really shows, outside the habit, outside her routines. And yet, though beauty is a concept she should have left behind with everything else, she feels herself blush. And swallow.

“Touka,” he continues, with a voice as empty as the reaching branches below. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.”

“I can’t either,” Touka replies. There is only a little space between them left. She bridges it, without any further thought, and kisses him.

:::

It’s been a long time since she kissed someone. It’s certainly the first time it’s ever been like  _this_. His lips are cold at first — he doesn’t respond — he raises his hands to her chest but it’s not with lust, it’s more as if he might push her away, but Touka is already leaning in for another kiss, and this one is deeper. He holds his breath, and then spills it in a silvery cloud that fogs the bottom half of the lenses of his glasses. When he inhales next it’s as if he had been drowning — he grasps her, as if for shore — and she grasps him back, just as hungry, her hands cradling his head to hers —

And then.

:::

“ _Foolish sister,_ ” Ayato said often, back when he deigned to say things to her. “ _Why do you keep trying so hard? It’s useless. Monastery or not, town or not — there’s no meaning to it. Light, darkness, spirits, demons, it’s all shit. Who cares! There’s no point to anything!_ ”

“ _Then why bother with anything at all?_ ” She couldn’t bite it back, anymore. “ _There has to be some reason, right?”_

She was so…she was so…

_“I’m just…tired. Of — walking a tightrope, all the time. I’m tired of being caught between…everything. I’m — I’m choosing.”_

“ _Choosing? Choosing what?”_  She’d never seen him be so furious. “ _What do you think could possibly make you happy?_ ”

“ _It’s not about happiness!_ ” she shouted back, desperate for him to understand. “ _Or sadness. Or even being right, or wrong. It’s just — about living._ ”

Wind, peppered with rain and freezing cold, blew through their broken windows. Touka wrapped her arms around herself, tight.

“ _I just — want to live._ ”

:::

_I am foolish,_  she realizes.  _So, so foolish._

She pulls away from Kaneki, breathless, not just from — from kissing him, but from her own shock. She looks at him, with confusion. Illuminated like this, his skin looks bright, soft. His eyes, most definitely, are glowing.

He licks his lips, not with relish or threat, but the way someone might after taking a sip of water. He says nothing to explain himself, and after a moment he can’t meet her gaze either. He simply looks down, and Touka raises her hand to his head again. Maybe she just imagined it.

_No,_  she realizes.  _I didn’t._

Her fingers find it, as easily as she did the first time — a short, hard growth in the mass of his dark hair, one and then another, pointed, and positioned exactly twin to the first she found. Horns. Now that she sees them, she can’t imagine how she missed them before. Now that she sees him, truly, she can’t imagine how she didn’t identify him from the very beginning.

He sees her disbelief. “An incubus,” he explains, quietly.

“No,” she breathes. “You’re the one from Yoshimura’s monastery.”

The one Yoshimura had led in from the rain. The one Touka had been instructed to supply with a blanket and a drink, despite the fact he bled so much she doubted he would make the night, much less the next hour. The one who caught Rize’s gaze before she departed. The one who rarely voiced anything aside from an order for black coffee. The one who only wanted to be left alone while he read his way through one shelf after another.

The more she thinks about it, the more memories of him glint from the shadow of her memory: how he would always request his drink without meeting her gaze; how he always took his books to the table closest where she served; how he always stayed the latest on the nights she worked but would stand and leave without word when it was time for her to douse the lanterns and lock up. His hair is different now — and, the glasses — but — she’s certain. More certain than she has been of anything in a while.

Things are fitting together now, against her will: things she’d avoided, things she never wanted to align. Things that perhaps she didn’t notice, or accepted without question, thanks to the fog that a demon’s mere presence could lay across one’s mind. Yoshimura and his declaration that all were welcome to his monastery, regardless from whence they came. The truth that his was the only place she knew that was never beset upon by demons.

All this time she believed it was because he had some kind of blessing to repel them. But perhaps the inquisitors’ only error was how long it had taken them to realize before they took up the torches.

_”This place is cursed with them!”_

“You’re not a priest,” she says. “You were pretending. You tricked everyone, with your — your demon magic, or something, and you followed me, all the way here.”

He swallows. “Not…not to hurt you.”

“Not to hurt me? Just look at you!” She holds his wan face to the light, rubbing her thumb in the shadows beneath his eyes. The light she saw in his irises is already fading to ash. “You’re…an incubus? And a priest? You’re starving, then. You’re worse than that first day Yoshimura dragged you in.”

He shakes his head, but can’t dislodge her. His expression is looking panicked, pained. “No, I — I only —”

“Wanted to devour me?” Her voice is sharp.

“ _No,_ ” he says. “No. Not at all. Never…never again.”

“Then what?” she demands, when he doesn’t answer. “ _What_?”

“M-missed you,” he blurts. “I…missed you.”

At her silence, he continues on his own.

“When the monastery was attacked, I…wasn’t there. And afterward…I didn’t know where you went. I had no idea, until I heard word, of an abbey — and a nun, with coffee.”

His gaze meets hers briefly before flicking away, the way it had a hundred times before, in a different life. He swallows.

“I made a choice, about what I wanted to do, that I didn’t want to…hurt anymore. But I thought…maybe…if I could just taste…at least one last time…”

He shakes his head. They are still close together. He tries to move her, but she is still holding him in place, and she understands now, that he is too feeble to do anything more. An understandable consequence of the lifestyle of a priest, for someone like him.

“One last taste,” Touka says. “And then what?”

He doesn’t answer, even after she shakes him. So, she says it for him.

“Your whole plan is a joke,” she says. “In the end, it wasn’t enough. You still wanted more.”

Incubi cannot be trusted. They would say and do anything to seduce you, anything to sip the life from your body, anything to leave you nothing more than a husk with a shattered, withered heart. Somewhere, she understands that an incubus doesn’t have to be beautiful or strong in order to lure someone. To serve their own needs they could just as easily be deeply incompetent. A book-reader. Starving.

“It wasn’t enough,” he repeats. A quiet confession. “In the end. I still wanted more.”

She can imagine Ayato again, furious with her. She can imagine shoving him away.

“Kaneki,” she says. Maybe he can hear it in her voice. His back is to the stone wall around the roof and he can’t press himself any further into it. When his face slips out of her hands she reaches up a little higher and fists her hands over the stubs of his horns and jerks him to face her. At first she thought maybe he couldn’t bear to look at her simply because of his own shyness and embarrassment, but when his gaze crosses hers and flicks away again, it’s not to the floor, or to the distance — it’s to her hand on him — to her body that she’s pressing against him — to her lips that she’s licking, carefully. His eyes are hazy. When she tilts him toward her, he doesn’t follow so much as melt. Despite his hollowness, the taste and texture of him, when she kisses him again, is soft and rich as cream. 

“T-Touka,” he says, and she kisses him again. His mouth is open — their breaths exchange — his tongue presses against hers, just a bit, and she meets it, and the next time he says it, “ _Touka_ ,” it’s as a sigh that makes her head light. He turns his head on his own, meeting her at a different angle, pressing his tongue just a little deeper, and the noise he makes when she sucks it is, she understands, the end of his reservation.

:::

He grips her. He is direct — his arms coil around her waist, and then one hand slips to her ass, and when her body bows back a bit, losing balance, he turns her, so that it’s her with the stone wall to her trembling spine as he presses his whole body against her, and presses closer still with every kiss. Whatever weakness he had before is replaced with a growing strength that makes her heart quiver — he rocks against her, slow but sharply, a ship in stormy waters — and too quickly all her insides are becoming choppy, churning with something that feels outside of her control.

She kisses him, again, again; her hands on his horns at first were to keep him in place but now she holds them to steady herself, and after just a moment, it’s easy — the horns are growing, spiraling, filling her palms every time he takes a breath from her. She looks at him and his altered silhouette, the raw glow and hunger and focus of him on her, and embers topple from her chest to her belly. Frightening. Thrilling.

“The top,” he says, “the hood part, the…thing. Can I…could I…”

“Yes,” Touka says, but it doesn’t take long for both of them to realize he has no idea how to do so. His fingers fumble, uselessly, until Touka reaches herself, for the buttons tucked under a fold, and slips them free. 

She pushes the habit back, unhelms it. It’s cold enough that her ears ache to  meet the cold uncovered. Her hair is tied back underneath, but she reaches back and hooks a finger on the ribbon, freeing it. Her hair falls free, if a little flat, but before she can shake it loose, Kaneki reaches forward and threshes his fingers through it himself. He combs through, fingertips rubbing into her scalp, and she sighs, surprised, pleasantly.

She can’t remember the last time someone touched her like that. Or like this. His lips graze her — the patch of skin beside her mouth, her cheek, her brow, but it’s at her ear that her body twitches, that her legs almost spring apart on their own, and he reads her so well. He nuzzles her again, one ear and then the other, suckling the curve and lobe of it until she finds herself making a tiny, helpless noise.

His dexterity makes so much of so little. How does it feel so good? She feels lightheaded. If it’s this good with only this…her hand drifts. He’s doing something to her, the way she feels can’t possibly be entirely natural, but if it’s some kind of magic of his, she doesn’t… _feel_  like she’s becoming a husk. Rather than shattering or slipping away into nothingness, her heart feels strong, alive. And if it’s this good with only this, then…

His eyes flicker as her fingers move to the buttons below her chin. They both pause. Suspend.

“Do…do you want to?”

It’s her, that’s asking. She surprises herself. But he mentioned before, that he made a choice, and he swallows.

“Yes,” he murmurs. “Do…do you?”

“Yes,” she breathes. “I…do.”

“Then…” He swallows. “Then more,” he says, roughly, “please,” and her hands scramble on their own, to the buttons of the habit. She undoes the first couple, of the top and of the shirt underneath, and at the first sight of skin, the mere curve of her collarbone, he kisses her. It’s cold and his mouth is like ice and then, abruptly, altogether too hot. They continue unbuttoning, all the way down, until even her necklace now is visible, and the ring on it glitters in the light. The fabric is stiff enough that it doesn’t fall away to show her body on its own, but before she can part it herself, he takes her hands, stopping her. He guides her down, her back to the stone floor. Her legs part, very naturally, around him. She looks up at him and slowly pulls the robe apart.

Her skin, exposed in front of someone else in the open, where she can see the moon and the trees and his priest’s robe, raw, and without ceremony, feels — obscene. And cold. Before she can truly register it, he sets his hands on her and his gloved palm splayed on her breast feels sharply intimate. He raises her legs to rest apart on his waist and it feels sudden but very, breathlessly, natural.

He helps her arms out of their long stiff sleeves and when she is free she reaches for his priest’s robe, hooks his finger into the tight collar of it, helping to free him as he fumbles too with his own set of intricate buttons. His layers have to be fought off, robes and shirts that are so stiff they almost keep his shape as he struggles out of them, like a cocoon. Beneath it his skin glimmers in the moonlight, and again she thinks,  _obscene_  — the curves of his muscles, the worn scars and smooth swaths of it, and especially, especially, how firm and warm it feels beneath her hands, and against her belly when he slides himself down to rest, bare, against her.

Their skin slides, exquisite; he lies flat against her, and then holds himself aloft. He kisses her breasts and beneath them, every rib, the protrusion of the bones of her hips, thorough, setting the flare of his mouth to parts of her she didn’t even know could catch flame — the last of her ribs, her navel and the spot below it, the inner flesh of her left thigh and (as he raises it) the skin beneath it as well, and finally, where her legs meet again with the core of her, a pleasure wet as his mouth when he —

She cries out, too loud, at the first gentle touch of him, the nuzzle of the tip of his tongue, and when he purses his lips to suck she muffles herself with one fist and uses the other to clutch him, a rough handful of dark hair and curved horn. She risks a glance downward and sees him gazing back up at her; when their eyes meet he proceeds again, indulgent, a long lap up over one lip and down the other before probing in-between, and this time all she notes is his face red with arousal and glasses skewed and moist. He sets the broad hot breadth of his tongue to her and the sound of him lapping feels louder than her desperately smothered cries. Her back arches above the floor and his fingers curl to the curve of it, tender.

He’s getting stronger. She feels her body start reverberate too strongly from his motion, feels like everything inside of her is starting to brim, she yanks him off her again by the horns and he looks dazed and slightly drunk, like he might have continued that way until — until the end, but he can’t, she won’t let him, he can’t. She spent so much time in quiet prayer and yet can’t find the words or the gall for what she wishes now, so she just pushes him, back, so that he is the one sitting on his cast-off clothing. She crawls over him, trembling; she doesn’t look down at him, just feels her way to — him, and strokes, and moves, until her knees are on either side of him, and in line with her stroking hand. He is a demon but his…hardness feels human enough, and elicits from him a very human gasp when her fingers squeeze.

One last moment to turn back. She stops, feeling the weight of this next decision. Balancing. Kaneki watches her, and then his eyes drop to her shoulders.

“You’re cold,” he whispers, rubbing her upper arms with his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”

“I’m not,” she assures him, but at that moment a breezes rushes past her, freezing, enough to sweep her hair and summon a rash of goosebumps up and down both arms.

“Here,” he says, and before she can say anything else, before she could possibly brace herself, she feels his body tense, and then, from his back, unfurling as silently as shadows: two wings. They stretch, grow, to an impossible size, larger than the wings of the largest vulture she’s ever seen circling impatiently overhead. The feather shafts rasp together with a sound like bones shifting together.

He was expecting, probably, her shock, but maybe not the fear she can’t suppress, because all at once the wings tip back in an obvious cringe.

“Sorry,” he gasps, “I’ll — I’ll —“

“No,” she says. “N-no…it’s fine.”

They are…clean. Not filthy with gore or blood-muddied earth. She maneuvers her shaking hand to touch one of them and her hand sinks into it, a bit: it’s more delicate, and warmer, than she expected, not brittle, or cold. She pinches a long pinion between her fingers and the tines of it spread. The wings move in time with his exhales, and so when they freeze in place, she knows it’s because he’s holding his breath.

From a distance, wings to her only ever meant imminent death, and hunger, so prying and endless it would stoop eagerly to human bodies and devour refuse and still remain unsatisfied. But like this…looking at them like this…

“They’re beautiful,” Touka murmurs, and the feathers floof, a little, matching his reddening cheeks. The next thing she knows is Kaneki’s mouth to hers, sweet, hungry, pulling her close, enveloping her from the wind. Every feather fans her gently, tickles, stokes her, scatters wave after wave of soft embers through her body. She is, definitely, not cold anymore. His tongue seeks hers and her hand seeks his erection and now when she moves them together, closer, closer,  _closer_ , her breath staggers. She feels him, the swell of him inside of her and the clutch of his hands and the caress of his wings around her, embracing her as tightly as she’s ever been. Demon magic, maybe, or something else even more powerful, makes her gasp. Her hands clasp him harder than they ever have in any kind of prayer. Her chest ignites with light and desire and pure, pure urgency.

She moves. Gently, at first, and then, at his whispered insistence, harder, and harder, grinding, until the skin between them is slippery, until his wings ruffle her hair and streak the sweat from her shoulders. He grabs her wrists and she moves even faster, until the slap of their bodies moving together feels louder than wingbeats or even their intermingled moans. The ring she wears around her neck swings, stamping on her breastbone, harder, harder.

She feels herself slipping, and falling, upward, upward, upward, until all its takes is a squeeze of her thighs and the bite of his teeth on her lip and their motions aligning so that he pushes in  _deep_ , and then she is crying out, and they pulse, together, not human or demon but something else, everything else: pleasure, spirit, magic.

When she descends, it’s slowly, and with the sense that all her veins are aglow. Through the wet haze of things, through the fog of their breath, she presses her hand to her chest, to her heart. It beats wildly, as if seeking escape; but it is, even after all this, still with her. Not stolen, or even shattered, or withered, but rather, beating more strongly than she can remember.

Her body quivers. Touka bows a little, over him, still holding him. His fingers loosen from hers. The feathers of his wings are fluffed and out of place but are lustrous, almost iridescent. His hair is disheveled, the horns spiraling openly, and there’s no way, she thinks, that he could possibly hide them now.

His body is still hot. Supple beneath her fingers. She is understanding something which should be terrifying, but instead makes her feel…a kind of softness in her chest that is almost unbearable. She speaks but finds her throat is hoarse, and he leans up, weakly.

“What?” he says.

She clears her throat. “I said…it’s not enough.”

He looks at her. She looks back.

“It’s not enough,” she repeats, and as he understands, he smiles, warmly. Her spine alights.

“Then come,” he murmurs. “Follow me, and I’ll give you —”

She silences him, with a kiss, and he enfolds her, again, soft, and dark, and tight.


End file.
